What it is, what to hear first, and what sits next to it.
Gqom is a genre of electronic dance music that emerged in the early 2010s from Durban, South Africa. It developed out of South African house music, kwaito and hip-hop. Unlike other South African electronic music, gqom is typified by minimal, raw and repetitive sound with heavy bass beats but without the four-on-the-flour rhythm pattern. The word gqom - sometimes expressed as qgom, igqom, gqomu or variants thereof - derives from an onomatopoeic combination of click consonants in isiZulu and isiXhosa meaning a hitting drum. .